


To Be Wanted

by desert_neon (sproutgirl)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Backstory, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Clint's insecurities, Gen, M/M, Mention of Child Abuse, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash, focuses more on Clint than any relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-24 00:50:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2561978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sproutgirl/pseuds/desert_neon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint learns at an early age that he's not wanted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Be Wanted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arsenicarcher (Arsenic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/gifts).



> For aresenicjade, who's been having a rough time of it. This isn't exactly the happy fluff I set out to give you, but I hope it makes you smile all the same.
> 
>  **Warning:** Mentions of child abuse and deep-seated insecurity.

Clint learns early that he was never really wanted. His dad likes to tell him, sometimes as he drops blows, sometimes as he just sneers at him from his armchair. Clint was an accident, Clint wasn’t meant to happen. Clint is an annoyance and another mouth to feed and his dad doesn’t want him.

It hurts, but his momma tells him she loves him, and that helps.

 

_________

 

“Don’t you want me?”

Clint is seven and he’d found a very nice lady in the lobby of the orphanage. She’d caught him peeking around the bannister and had said hello, drawing him out and asking him questions. He hadn’t answered them at first, but then she’d given him some gum from her purse, and he’d smiled because he hadn’t had gum since before his momma died.

He’d taken the gum and told her his name, and he absolutely had not allowed himself to touch the elaborate stitching on her dress. He’d told her about Barney, about how he was the best big brother ever, about how he looked out for Clint, about how Barney and Clint were a matched set. If this lady was going to take him home, then she’d have to take Barney too, and she’d needed to understand that.

She’d smiled and said that brothers were important, and Clint had beamed back, glad she got it. But before they could say anything else, one of the nuns came out with a man and a baby—Baby Gracie, not to be confused with Little Gracie, who had turned four the month before. The nice lady had stood and swooped over to take Gracie from the man, cooing and kissing, and practically crying. The man shook hands with Sister Agatha, and then the new family walked past Clint towards the door.

Clint’s voice breaks as he calls out, as he asks his heartbroken question. The man barely pauses, but the lady stops and makes him stop too. She hands the baby to him and goes back to kneel in front of Clint, which is nice, because Sister Agatha has pulled him to her, and she isn’t the gentlest of the nuns. “I’m sorry, Clint. I wasn’t here for you. We’ve already chosen Grace, and, well. You understand. We wanted a baby. You’re not a baby, are you? You’re a big boy.”

Clint nods, half defiant and half sullen, because he _is_ a big boy, but now he sort of wishes he wasn’t. He reaches out and runs a hand over the pattern at the edge of her sleeve.

“And you have your brother to look out for you. You’re a lucky boy too. A lucky big boy.”

Clint bites his wobbling lip. He doesn’t _feel_ lucky. He watches her stand up and leave, not even caring that she apologizes again. He’d thought she was nice, but she isn’t. She’s horrible. He doesn’t want to go home with her anyway.

Except for how he really, really does.

 

_________

 

“They won’t want us, Barney.”

Barney scoffs as they trudge across the field. “You, maybe,” he teases, and Clint’s heart sinks because, yes, that’s what he’d been thinking. Barney is fifteen and strong, and Clint is twelve and scrawny. Fifteen year olds are allowed to have jobs, but twelve year olds are supposed to be in school.

“Besides, aren’t there laws and stuff? About kids working?”

“Don’t be so naïve. If we can pull our weight, Carson’s will take us. It’s not like a fucking circus cares so much about legal shit. Besides, it’s like a tradition, right?” He slings an arm over Clint’s shoulders and jostles him a little, and Clint lets the gesture reassure him. “I’m sure there’s a bunch of other kids working there already.”

There aren’t, in fact, any other kids there, but Barney talks their way in anyway. Clint has to promise to work hard, to do the jobs no one else wants, like cleaning the animal cages and managing the johns when the town they’re in makes them rent them. He doesn’t mind, though. He can tell Carson doesn’t really want him, and at least making that promise allows him to stay with Barney, who does.

 

_________

 

“You want me?”

Clint’s voice is incredulous, disbelieving and untrusting. He’d just been goofing around, tossing the knives he’d found behind the big top. Sure, he’s proud that he’d hit his target every time, but he’s still just a kid. No way would Trickshot actually want to use an almost fourteen year old in his act.

“Can you keep hitting targets like that?”

Clint nods, because he absolutely _can_.

“Then yeah, kid, I want you.”

 

_________

 

“ _That’s_ what you want me for?”

Clint had been summoned by Barney and Trickshot in the middle of the night. He’d gone because he’d trusted them, but now he sees how stupid that was. They want him to play lookout as they rob a house in town. Clint’s heart sinks and he shakes his head.

Barney sneers at him and, God, he looks like their dad. “What did you think we wanted you for? Look, Clint, it’s not a big deal. Me and Trick, we’ve been doing this a while. But this house we got in mind is bigger than any of the others. Richer. We need your eyes to get it done.”

Clint shakes his head again. “That’s not— Fuck, Barney! That’s not right. You shouldn’t be doing this.”

Barney scoffs, the same sound he’s been making for years, but meaner this time. “It’s rich assholes who probably got their money off the backs of working stiffs like us. What do you care?”

Clint takes a step back with a shrug. “I don’t know. But it’s not right. Besides, you could get caught. Or. Or, like, they could figure out that it happens when Carson’s is in town. You’ll get Old Man Carson in trouble.”

Barney’s face twists up in an unpleasant expression and he opens his mouth, but Trickshot elbows him in the ribs. “Don’t worry about Carson, kid. It won’t get back to him. We’re careful. Nothing’s gonna happen.”

Clint is dubious, but he lets them talk him out of saying anything. They don’t make him help, which is good, as long as he keeps his trap shut, which leaves his stomach in knots all night, even after Barney returns to their trailer safely.

When he finds out, a few weeks later, about the _bigger_ plan, the plan to rob Carson himself, there are no deals to be made. Clint gets beaten and left for dead, and the circus moves on without him. No one wants an archer with two broken arms and his eyes swelled shut.

 

_________

 

“You don’t want me.”

It’s true, even if they don’t know it. Clint doesn’t mind taking individual jobs for this organization, because the people they ask him to take out are their rivals. Clint is only too happy to shoot drug lords and mob bosses, but that doesn’t mean he wants to permanently work for a cartel.

King, Navarro’s right hand man, smiles creepily. “Don’t we?” he asks. “You’re the best in the business, but you don’t have the clientele you deserve. We know you still struggle between jobs. Why not come work for us full time? The pay is constant, even when you do nothing.”

Clint shakes his head. The moment he signs on with them is the moment he stops being able to decline targets, and he won’t give up that right. “I wouldn’t be a good fit.”

“Think about it,” King persuades, and Clint nods, because he still needs to get out of there alive. They’re in the cartel’s main base of operations, and Clint might not make it out if he flatly refuses. “Our fringe benefits package is . . . exceptional.”

Clint tilts his head, questioning, and King laughs before whistling through his teeth. A girl is dragged into the room, no more than fifteen or sixteen, bound at the hands and drugged to the gills. Clint very consciously does not let his muscles tense, but he knows he must look displeased.

“Don’t like this one? No matter. There are more to choose from downstairs. All ages and sizes, my friend, any gender.”

Clint has never more fervently wished to _not_ be wanted. He’s offended they ever thought him to be a kindred spirit. Fortunately, he’s very good at channeling his anger and disgust, and everyone in the complex ends up dead—King then and there, Navarro in his office forty minutes later—except the thirty or so kids Clint rescues from the cellar.

 

_________

 

“What do you want?”

“You.”

It’s said so simply, so honestly, that Clint can’t help but blink. He doesn’t believe the man in front of him, but then why should he? The guy’s a SHIELD agent. Actually, he’s an assistant _deputy director_ of SHIELD, and probably lies about what he had for breakfast as a matter of course.

“Mr. Barton, SHIELD’s been interested in you a long time, ever since you took down Navarro.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you don’t. SHIELD will pay you, feed you, house you, and all you have to do is what you’re already doing, but with more resources and backup, and medical if things go to shit.”

Things go to shit a lot around Clint. Nature of the job. “And I shoot where you point,” he says distrustfully. He admits the trappings sound good, but if he loses that autonomy . . . Well, he’d just be a government sanctioned killer rather than freelance, and he prefers to choose his own targets who deserve it, rather than some politico who’s making too much trouble for the President or some shit.

“That’s the general idea.” The guy—Fury—leans back casually in his seat, one arm draped over the back. Clint knows it’s an act, but it’s an impressive one. “Of course, you’ll have the right to refuse any assignment you choose. There’d better be a damn good reason, but I think you’ll find you won’t have too many objections. We are not the CIA, and we are not the goddamned NSA. We don’t do other people’s dirty work.”

Clint takes the card the guy offers, blank but for a single phone number, and agrees to think about it. When his next job does, inevitably, go to shit and he’s dodging bullets—some successfully but others less so—he thinks it would be nice to have backup. When he’s back in his dingy motel room trying to patch himself up, he thinks it would be nice to have medical care. And when his stomach growls as he tries to sleep, he thinks it would be nice to have three squares a day.

He fingers the card and makes his decision.

 

_________

 

“You wanted me, sir?”

“Agent Barton, come in.”

Agent Coulson is not who Clint expected him to be. He’s actually the guy he’s seen in Fury’s office, the one who looks like a goddamned paper-pusher. The one Clint had assumed to be from SHIELD’s accounting department, even though now, as Coulson stands up, Clint can see how stupid that was. The man exudes authority and badassness, with strength hiding under the expensive suit and deadliness lurking behind the bland expression and calm gaze. Clint can understand the whispers and rumors now.

Coulson extends his hand and Clint reins in his twitch and shakes the man’s hand. “Agent Barton, since Deputy Director Fury received his promotion, you’ve bounced from handler to handler, never really finding a fit.” Coulson sits and waves for Clint to do the same, so Clint does, sprawling in the guest chair just to see how proper Agent Coulson will react. Coulson does nothing but fold his hands together on the desk. “Would you say that’s correct?”

Clint snorts. “I’m not a good fit for anyone, sir. Too insubordinate, you know. Problems with authority.”

“You worked well with Fury.”

Clint shrugs. He likes Fury, and Fury, surprisingly enough, respects him. It had been easy to work with him.

“Well. Deputy Director Fury has requested that you and I give it a shot.”

“Sir?”

“I’m your handler, Barton. Temporary assignment unless all goes well, in which case it will be a long term arrangement.”

 _Great_ , Clint thinks as he nods. At least a few of the other handlers had _requested_ him, until Clint had fucked it up with his smart mouth and inability to listen to inferior orders. Coulson had to be ordered by the boss to take him on. Wonderful.

 

_________

 

“You don’t want me.”

Clint stares hard at Natasha, because that’s usually his line. Also, what? He’s standing in her quarters, pants hanging open because obviously he _does_. He does want her.

She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. Her smiles rarely do. “Sorry to tell you this, but the one you want is Coulson.”

Clint stares some more. He has no idea what she’s talking about, except that he secretly does. He just hadn’t thought anyone else would have any idea. “Well, Coulson’s unconscious in Medical right now, and that’s not really my kink.” He makes a face at the very thought.

“So maybe that’s where you should be,” she says, completely ignoring the joke, letting it fall flat.

He shakes his head. “No. He . . . That would be weird. He doesn’t want me, so that would be weird.”

Natasha looks at him askance, her head titled to one side as she examines him for several long seconds. “Friends can’t sit vigil at bedsides?” is what she finally says.

“I—” Clint shuts up after that, because hell yes, they fucking _can_. He does up his pants and shoots Natasha a grin. “Thanks.”

She waves him off, and this time her smile is soft and maybe even fond, and Clint’s amazed to see the way it changes her eyes.

 

_________

 

“You don’t want me anymore.”

“Clint.”

Clint looks up to see Bobbi kneeling beside him on the floor. He fights her pull on the bottle for only a second, then lets her take it away. He loves her. He does. Just not like he should, and never like she’s deserved. He knows that. Their marriage had been a bad idea from the start, impulsive and motivated by the wrong things, and it was only a matter of time before Clint fucked it up. 

“S’okay,” he slurs at her now. “I get it. S’okay.”

He stumbles when she pulls him to his feet, trips on his way to the bed, and isn’t surprised when she leaves. She’s not married to him anymore. She has no obligation to stay.

He’s shocked to find Coulson there in the morning, but gratefully accepts the coffee and sympathetic silence his friend offers. Coulson gets it, because he just went through his own breakup a couple months back, and Clint will never admit to anyone how that news had pulled the trigger on his divorce from Bobbi.

 

_________

 

“You want me.”

Clint’s tone is flat and disbelieving, and Coulson actually shifts one shoulder, which for him is practically _fidgeting_.

“I— Yes,” Coulson says. “I do. I’m sorry, I know it’s inappropriate, and as your handler I should be able to maintain some distance. But I can’t. Not anymore. I want you.”

Clint has to sit down, and he fumbles blindly for the couch, collapsing onto it when his hand touches fabric near his knees.

“Clint?” Coulson says, and his voice is full of concern and Clint can’t even. He shakes his head vehemently, and Coulson doesn’t say anything else.

Clint can’t fathom it. He almost doesn’t believe it, except it’s _Coulson_. Coulson doesn’t lie to him. There are things he doesn’t tell him, things he says are classified, sure. But he doesn’t _lie_. But Clint doesn’t know what it’s like to be wanted. He can’t understand it, can’t process the words.

“I . . . I guess I’ll just go then,” Coulson says, and he sounds so disappointed. Clint whips his head up to look at him, and Coulson looks _sad_. “I’m sorry. I knew nothing would come of it, I shouldn’t have said anything. I’ll leave. If you decide to transfer away from Delta, I’ll approve it. No, wait. That’s not fair. If you want _me_ to transfer away from Delta, I will. You should be able to stay with Natasha.”

Clint just stares at Coulson, because nothing is making any sense.

“Should I call her?” Coulson asks, and he still looks sad but he also looks concerned. Probably because Clint’s gone completely nonverbal. “Ask her to come over?”

Clint shakes his head again, because why would he want Natasha when Coulson’s here, saying these things? “You want me?”

Coulson adds confusion to the expressions on his face, and he nods, taking a step closer and kneeling in front of Clint. “I do.”

“No one’s . . . People don’t _want_ me.”

The confusion clears, and now Coulson looks sad with a healthy dose of pissed off. “Anyone who doesn’t want you is a moron. Anyone who doesn’t see the man you are isn’t worth your time and attention. _I_ want you, Clint. I have for years. Pretty sure I always will.”

Clint likes that Coulson doesn’t promise forever, because no one can promise that, and Clint is bound to fuck it up somewhere down the road. But Coulson wants him now, in this moment, and that is far more than Clint had ever thought he’d get. So he tilts himself forward, sliding off the couch to join Coulson on the floor, and kisses him.

**Author's Note:**

> The end of this fic is not in any way meant to imply that things are magically better. I imagine it takes a lot of time and effort for Clint to start feeling secure. But eventually he does not doubt that he is wanted, not only by Phil, but also by Natasha, Bobbi, and all his other friends at SHIELD, and later, the Avengers.
> 
> As with most of my works, this is not beta-ed. If anyone finds any glaring mistakes, please feel free to politely point them out.


End file.
